Emolument surveyed 900 people in different industries and countries. The survey charted the respondents’ agreement to the question “Is technology putting your job at risk?” by the respondent’s highest level of education. At all educational levels surveyed, from no degree to MBAs and Masters in Finance, most of the people who took the survey did not think their jobs were at risk. The differences between levels were significant, however.
People with a Masters in Finance, for example, answered the question affirmatively 40 percent of the time, but 60 percent believed their jobs were not at risk of automation. At the other end of the scale, however, fully 82 percent of people with no college degree who were surveyed felt their jobs were not at risk and only 18 percent believed they were at risk. The least educated, however, and despite how they might answer on surveys, are actually the most likely to lose their livelihoods. Staying in denial will not serve them well, and anyone who supports their mistaken beliefs is doing them a disservice.
A report from the University of Oxford’s Oxford Martin School found that in the U.K., 35 percent of jobs are at risk of replacement by technology. The same study found that 47 percent of U.S. jobs and 77 percent of jobs in China are at risk of automation.
Business Insider cited a report from the 2016 World Economic Forum that stated automation “will lead to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020.” The report also declared that “the majority of jobs will be lost by low-skilled workers, generally with lower levels of education.”
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